"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
"within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
Thomas Jefferson

I'm still thinking, slowly but surely, through what is required to
maximize my (and by extension, everyone else's) liberty. Two facets of
the news have recently come to my attention.

One is that after having spent some time subscribed to the
National
Police Misconduct NewsFeed, my
last remaining vestiges of hope in the police as protectors of the
innocent have fallen by the wayside. The essential foundation of the
rule of law is that all people have the law applied to them equally;
however, if a police officer violates my rights, there would seem to
be, in practice, no way for me to get redress.

They can buy a 'tip' from a known liar about such things, paying him
in drugs. They can raid a completely different home than the one in
their warrant, terrorizing you even if you're completely innocent.
They can shoot your obviously harmless dog that is running /away/ and
poses no actual threat. They can give conflicting orders and require
you to obey all of them, and use force against you when you fail to
comply with the impossible. They can torture the residents, even to
death. They can plant evidence. They can seize ('steal') property from
anyone who comes into their power, and not return it. If any video of
such activities exists, and they get their hands on it, it will
mysteriously disappear... and if anything happens other than an
internal investigation clearing all officers involved, it is the
exception, not the rule.

(Oh, yesin case you haven't been watching the news lately, Harper
is currently negotiating a new border treaty which will allow squads
of American police to operate on Canadian territory, as long as they
can claim that at least one Canadian officer was technically in charge
of them at the time, meaning that whatever differences may exist
between American and Canadian police will soon no longer matter.)

In short, it seems to be an entirely reasonable view that we civilians
are effectively under the thumb of a military occupying powerand
thus that, wherever possible, we should try to conduct our business
without getting the powers-that-be involved at all.

The other facet is that in spite of whatever political disagreements I
may have with the Occupy movement, at least one aspect of how they're
trying to put their money where their mouth is should appeal even to
ElNeil: in their General Assemblies, they aim for a practice of "one
man, one veto". Any participant who wishes to block a proposal, can.
Which leads to a whole host of difficulties, of course, but somehow,
they seem to be figuring out how to deal with them.

The former facet has led me to the thought that, whenever possible,
liberty-preferring citizens should try to resolve their differences
among themselves, rather than through the current official legal
system... including preferring going through some form of binding
arbitration process rather than the courts.

However, any such arbitration process requires that the participants
at least agree to the overall framework, the rules that will apply,
even if they end up disagreeing with the outcome. And this seems to be
the sticky point. Even full-fledged libertarians who base their
political views on entirely rational bases can have some rather
fundamental disagreements about certain important aspects. For
example, ElNeil and I have fairly wildly diverging viewpoints on
copyrighthe sees it as a property right about as fundamental as
being able to own a knife, while I see it as a government-granted
temporary monopoly. It is entirely possible that I might perform an
act which ElNeil considers a violation of his rights, which he would
want to seek redress for; but unless the two of us are able to come to
some agreement about what rules an arbitrator would follow, neither of
us would have any signficant incentive to agree to be bound by
arbitration we know we wouldn't win...

...other than the relatively abstract benefits of being able to
participate in a dispute-resolution system which avoids the
involvement of the occupying powers-that-be.

One approach to solving this would be for each of us to try convincing
the other of the logical and rational foundations of our viewpoints.
(For example, I have a handy reference demonstrating that the maximum
benefit comes from copyright durations
of 14 years or less,
especially pages 26-29, and could probably be convinced by ElNeil to
agree to respect copyrights of that duration.)

But what if such agreement can't be reached? As in the Occupy
movement, any individual involved can veto any arbitration rule they
don't want enforced on them. I'm not entirely sure what a good answer
to this problem will be; but after spending a good bit of time
thinking hard about it, I have a fairly strong suspicion that at least
part of the answer can involve people announcing, beforehand, what
standards of behaviour they want to be held to. To let other people
know what actions they do not want others committing against them, and
thus what actions against they wish to be held accountable for
themselves, should they perform them. A sort of cross between a
personal legal code, a declaration of principles of honor, and a
statement of casus belli. I've already published "DataPacRat's Draft
for a Libertarian Compact"such an announcement would be similar,
only going into more detail, enough so that an arbitrator would be
able to read it and apply it against the announcer, should a dispute
arise. It might also be useful to include additional details such as
standards of evidence, nature of recompense, and what should be done
when someone has provided very strong evidence from their behaviour
that they are likely to infringe on someone's rights in the future,
how to deal with later revised versionsmost of the various things a
government-provided legal code covers beyond listing actual criminal
acts.

If such announcements are made, with at least implicit agreements to
accept arbitration that abides by such standards, then that would seem
to go a long way to solving the problems of non-governmental
arbitration. Not necessarily all of them, but until such time as a
full solution is found, a partial solution seems better than none.

I'm currently working up a draft of such an announcement for myself.
I'd like to get the first version as good as I can before publicly
releasing it, in order to allow as many like-minded libertarians as
possible to be able to use it as a base for any similar announcements
they wish to make for themselves. If you would like to offer any
input, you may, as always, reach me at datapacrat@datapacrat.com.